How do you get IBS?
#349346 - 08/23/09 04:32 PM
|
|
|
|
|
Penney
Reged: 08/21/09
Posts: 83
|
|
|
I am confused about how this just happens. Did I do something to cause IBS? For instance, I had changed my diet right before I started developing my IBS symptoms? Did that cause it? And even if I change my diet back-- that won't undo the damage I did? It would seem that if you do something to cause your body to develop IBS, you could stop doing that something and then your body would not have the IBS anymore.
Or did changing my diet just make me get the symptoms of IBS because I happened to change my diet from a diet that was similar to an IBS safe diet, to a diet based predominantly on fruit, salad, and yogurt? What I'm trying to say is did I have IBS all along and then just get the symptoms this year because I was eating those foods?
How come IBS can't be eliminated once you get it? I didn't always have this, so why will I always have it from now on? I understand that it is a brain-bowel functional disorder. But why did my brain-bowel connection used to work and now it doesn't? Can I get it to work again?
I have had sooo many tests and the doctors say it is irritable bowel. But given that all of this happened right after I changed my diet to the above (mostly fruit, salad, yogurt-- trying to be healthy!) I am very suspicious that it is fructose malabsorption? Can a person just have fructose malabsorption? I am curious if I could possibly JUST have fructose malabsorption and not IBS. Then I would only have to eliminate the high fructose foods- right? So how can one know this? It seems the only test I haven't had is that hydrogen breath test. But everything else I had (colonoscopy, endoscopy, barium esophagram, small bowel series, gallbladder ultrasound, lactose intolerance test, celiac panel) has been negative (except for lactose). How do I know for sure that this is the right diagnosis?
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Also-- another thing I have questioned is the connection with my menstrual cycle is RIDICULOUSLY apparent. How do I know this is IBS and not some gynecological issue? I heard that endometriosis can only be diagnosed by laproscopic procedure and I feel like that is going a little far!
What other gynecological issues could be tied to IBS symptoms? I sometimes get sharp pain in my left hip bone area.
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Sorry for being a pest. You ask such interesting questions.
In most instances the cause of IBS is unknown. It can appear any time during your life and it occurs more frequently in women than men. Some times IBS appears after a GI infections (post infection IBS or PI-IBS). In 60% of the cases it disappears within 5 years in the rest it doesn't. There is good evidence there may be a genetic component to some individual's IBS. You didn't cause it. An unknown factor including such things as GI infections, use of antibiotics and genetic predisposition caused it. Changing your diet might have exacerbated but it definitely did not cause it.
Yes - a person can have just fructose malabsorption and not IBS. However, from the series of test you have had it sounds like the discomfort you experience is from an unknown origin and you have bundled into 10-15% of the population with IBS. IBS symptoms range from mild to severe. Many people learn to live problem free with dietary and life style changes. Others have more difficulty reaching a level stability.
"How do you know if you have he right diagnosis?" is a question I am sure everyone with IBS asks themselves everyday  Unfortunately, the gut is a very complicated organ about which we still know very little. Perhaps the best thing you can do is keep seeking advice and guidance from health professionals and others with IBS in hope of gaining insight into new ways to manage your symptoms and better diagnose the problem.
--------------------
STABLE: ♂, IBS-D 50+ years - Science of IBS
The FODMAP Approach to Managing IBS Symptoms
Evidence-based Dietary Management of Functional GI Symptoms: The FODMAP Approach
FODMAP Chart & Cheatsheet
The Role of Food & Dietary Intervention in IBS
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Thanks so much. I have already learned SO much in just this last week from exploring this entire site. I feel much more empowered. Before I felt like such a victim. Now I feel like I can at least do SOMETHING to help myself a bit. I'm going back to college next week so that is why I'm reading everything I can now about IBS so I can really be prepared to make this year much better than my last year was. Thanks for the information! 
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Penney, I so agree with you. There is a definite cause and effect with IBS. It doesn't just magically drop out of the sky one day without a trigger.
I was a perfectly normal, happy 6 year old little girl, until I was molested, and then all h*** broke lose. At first all I had were belly-aches, (which is a common symptom in abused kids). For a period of time, I was afraid to leave the house for school, not to mention the severe belly-aches, so I had to be home schooled for a year. Then the chronic C started and lasted until I turned about 25, and then for about the last 5 years, it has alternated.
But, this is where I disagree with most. I feel that if you were OK once, that you can find your way back there. I just haven't found the way yet.  I believe we can heal totally and completely, so keep the faith.
The strange thing for me was, as a child the IBS was triggered with the molestation (stress),and as an adult stress is still the major trigger, but strangely enough, certain foods are too. So, I never quite understood that, but there is quite a bit I don't understand.
I continue to search out all treatments, including alternative. I leave no stone unturned.
You'll find your way, too. Luckily for me, I was able to work with a very good therpist at a young age, and the belly-aches are gone, I just have extreme bloating and alternating D or C.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Thanks! I really hope that one day I will feel like I used to again.
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
It seems to me that when people get it as adults without any history of digestive problems and it comes on at a specific point, it is more likely that it will go away or go into 'remission' at least. It seems to me that when people have a family history of it and have symptoms from a young age that it is harder to get stable and never goes away.
--------------------
IBS-A for 20 years with terrible bloating and gas. On the diet since April 2004. Remember this from Heather's information pages:
"You absolutely must eat insoluble fiber foods, and as much as safely possible, but within the IBS dietary guidelines. Treat insoluble fiber foods with suitable caution, and you'll be able to enjoy a wide variety of them, in very healthy quantities, without problem." Please eat IF foods!
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
hmm..I've had ibs about 5 years...got it when I was 17,I believe. I have some relatives with ibs..my ibs has never went into remission. I do remember that I had few bm's a week growing up and when I did have them they clogged the toilet..I do remember having some constipation..but I evacuated like a normal person and had nothing else wrong..Do I sound like someon whose ibs will never go into remission?
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
I get the same sort of hip-area pain. I know that IBS goes crazy with some women's monthly cycles and I remember hearing somewhere that there is a link between IBS-D and menstrual cramps (something about some chemical that causes the cramping also causing intestinal disruptions).
When I was 13, I was on birth control for incredibly painful menstrual cramps and I went on a class trip to New York and had a series of panic attacks. Thus began my romps with social anxiety disorder. Soon after, I developed (or at least noticed--looking back, I may have had them all along without ever knowing) IBS symptoms, but I wasn't fully diagnosed until I was about 17. Sometimes I wonder if taking hormonal pills at such a young age messed up my body chemistry and caused--or brought out a latent predisposition toward--anxiety and if that anxiety perpetuated my IBS.
Unfortunately, I can't go back and change anything. I've long since stopped taking birth control and my IBS is as unruly as ever.
Unlearning/relearning is a complicated procedure that can't always be attained simply through removing the cause of the change--if that cause can even be pinpointed (remember: correlation does not imply causation).
Our bodies and minds have curious ways of rewriting themselves and falling into nasty programming.
Years ago, I had a joint injury and while relearning to walk on my own, my physical therapist told me something very interesting. It takes approximately 24 hours for the mind to remap an aspect of the body's programming. A single day to unravel a pattern you've stuck with for your whole life! That is to say, if you tie your middle finger and your ring finger together for 24-hours (and move them only as a single digit for that entire period of time), even after you remove the ties (i.e., the cause of the change in programming), you will register those two fingers as one digit. It takes a series of relearning and reprogramming after that point for one to relearn how to use those two fingers separately. Knowing this helped me recover from my injury, to recognize that I wasn't broken anymore like my mind was telling me, but that I needed to work up gradually before I could be 100% better.
I don't know how close modern medicine is to telling us what exactly causes IBS and whether it can be avoided or cured, but for the time being, all we really have is how to treat its symptoms (through diet, exercise, and stress management) and the hope that our internal turmoil will stabilize with time.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Interesting post because I've wondered the same thing. Over the last couple years, we've eliminated processed foods and switched to organics. At the end of December/beginning of January I started drinking smoothies of organic fruit and mainly spinach for the greens (I altered sometimes though). About 3 weeks into this, all h*ll broke lose. I had horrible stabbing pain in my left side and went through a huge series of tests. My period went nuts and was coming every 14 days and sometimes now not for months. I have urgent loose bowel movements in the morning and had been having them after eating anything "bad" until I started taking Align. Now I have just 1 bowel movement in the morning and its 80% formed I'd say. I have heard that your body can be detoxing if you ate horribly before, but I didnt. I just gradually made small changes. The smoothie thing was the only "big" change I could think of. I tried stopping drinking them and no deal. Nothing works. Today I had blood in my stools which I'm told is NOT an IBS symptom. I've had it all though - every test, colonoscopy CT scan MRI included...nothing.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Yeah-- it just seems too much of a coincidence that this all happened right around the time I changed my diet.
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Just as an aside I don't think the "hip" area pain is related to a woman's cycle, as I am male and that's one of my predominant pain areas. I describe it as if I was hollow with a bowling ball inside me harnessed to my hip bones. It's like a pain/downward pulling pressure combo. Weird as all get up and I never felt anything like it til I was diagnosed with IBS.
As for the original post, I had a stomach bug this Dec (at 28 years old) that was pretty virulent, and then I was normal for two months with random periods of urgency when I ate something fatty/delicious, to finally another bug (may have been just first signs of IBS D) at a period of intense stress. Since then it's been daily pain and misery.
So then, what caused it, the original bug, the 2nd bug, the stress, a gradual build up of a diet high in dairy, meat, and processed sugars (though I was never overweight)? That's a good question, and one medical science hasn't quite got to yet.
Good times
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
|
Haha yeah I totally agree with the pain/downward pulling pressure combo. I once described it as it feels like a monkey is hanging from my stomach! Haha-- of course that just made me sound crazier than I already do when talking about all the messed up feelings inside my abdomen!
--------------------
IBS-C, GERD, Lactose Intolerant, "Allergic" to Legumes (Soy!), Tree Nuts.
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
|
Posts
